Ok I have played the Fifa 2005 demo on my pc, I have a good setup so the game played well. I must admit that the game is quite playable. Plays similar to PES in terms of passing and build up play now, and player movement is quite good. The Animation is fluid, and player response is much improved.
Graphically, well it's pretty good. Sharp colours etc The Demo let me play a short game, of one half, Arsenal V AC Milan. BUT, and with Fifa, there is always a but. The game itself feels a little strange, the players movement over the surface, still has that gliding feel, although not as bad as in previous games. Can get up and down the pitch relatively easy and break through defenders, but that could have somehting to do with the difficulty setting on the demo. Sprinting past defenders I found pretty easy to do, but again, could be a difficulty level issue. As for the game speed, it is spot on.
There are a few major flaws which let it down though and I will go into that now. Ball physics are a little strange, a little too light, like when you cross. Shooting is disasterous, hardly any control over that aspect, that you have in PES. Goals don't look that brilliant, as they do in PES, so the sense of scoring is still not that good, but celebrations arent bad. Best feature of the game is passing and movement, and for that I cant fault it too much. I stil prefer WE8 and overall PES style of passing, as the building up feels better, but here it is actually quite good however, this aspect is still a little too simplistic and has that repetative feel. For me overall, it still has that unnatural feeling that I have mentioned before. It's just something they seem to lack when putting the game together. You just dont get the sense of a big match feeling, and depth whilst playing a game, apart from the sound which is top notch, (chants are pretty cool)
Bottom line is, EA, have taken a bigger step and this game is an improvement on the last. I will give them credit and eat a little humble pie this time round and say the game is good. However as good as it may be, it still falls short of WE8/PES4s gaming excellence, which is the standard to measure against. I think I may backtrack a little and might...purchase the game, just for it's variety (leagues, teams etc)